Spain and the Holocaust

anti-Semitism. It appeared possible that Spain might enter into an alliance with the Axis powers in 1940 and 1941. In this period, Franco's regime compiled a register of Jews

resident in Spain and added Jewish identity to its official identity documents. Other pre-existing anti-Jewish measures remained in force.

The regime failed to protect the vast majority of Spanish

transit visas from France

. In the post-war years, the Franco regime cultivated the idea that it had acted to protect Jews across Europe as a means to improve diplomatic relations with the former Allied powers.

Background

Spanish Morocco; however, the practical restrictions imposed in the aftermath of the Civil War made it increasingly hard for Jews to live in Spain.^[1]

Franco ensured that Spain was

neutral at the start of World War II but seriously contemplated joining the conflict as a German ally in the aftermath of the Fall of France in 1940. He met Adolf Hitler on 23–24 October 1940 but was unable to gain promises that Spain would gain colonial territories from France in North Africa because Hitler feared delegitimising the new Vichy regime

in France. Spain ultimately remained neutral but maintained close economic and political relations with the Nazi regime to the end of the war.

Protestant services, had been forbidden since the Civil War.^[3] José Finat y Escrivá de Romaní, the Director of Security, ordered a list of Jews and foreigners in Spain to be compiled in May 1941. The same year, Jewish status was marked on Spanish identity papers for the first time.^[3]^[4]

The Franco regime was informed of atrocities on the

German Army, who "observed the numerous murders of Jews and Polish and Russian civilians".^[5] The Blue Division occasionally provided temporary protection to Jews who found themselves within its areas of control.^[6]

Historically, Spain had attempted to extend its influence over

protected status. The German occupation authorities issued a repatriation ultimatum (Heimschaffungsaktion) requiring neutral states to repatriate their Jewish citizens and the Spanish government ultimately accepted 300 Spanish Jews from France and 1,357 from Greece but failed to intervene on behalf of the majority of Spanish Jews in German-occupied Europe.^[7] Michael Alpert writes that "to save these Jews would mean having to accept that they had the right to repatriation, to live as residents in Spain, or so it seems to have been feared in Madrid. While, on the one hand, the Spanish regime, as always inconsistently, issued instructions to its representatives to try to prevent the deportation of Jews, on the other, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid allowed the Nazis and Vichy puppet government to apply anti-Jewish regulations to people whom Spain should have protected".^[7]

In addition, Spanish authorities permitted 20,000 to 35,000 Jews to travel through Spanish territory on

transit visas from France.^[8]^[9] A smaller number of Jewish refugees were among the évadés escaping illegally into Spanish territory across the Pyrenees from France and other parts of Western Europe en route for Portugal or Gibraltar from where they traveled to the United Kingdom or United States

.

Personal initiatives

Eduardo Propper de Callejón, a Spanish diplomat, issued a number of visas and transit visas to French refugees at Bordeaux over three days in June 1940. He was married to a Jewish woman and apparently made the decision on his own initiative on the grounds that the Spanish Embassy should not be seen to be less generous than the local Portuguese consulate where Aristides de Sousa Mendes was issuing thousands of visas. It is not known exactly how many individuals received these documents and official records were destroyed by the Franco regime at the time in an apparent attempt to cover up his actions; not all the recipients were Jews.^[10]

Ángel Sanz Briz, a Spanish diplomat in Hungary, protected several hundred Hungarian Jews in 1944. After he was ordered to withdraw from the country ahead of the Red Army's advance, he encouraged Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian businessman, to pose as the Spanish consul-general and continue his activities. In this way, 3,500 Jews are thought to have been saved.^[6] Stanley G. Payne described Sanz Briz's actions as "a notable humanitarian achievement by far the most outstanding of anyone in Spanish government during World War II" but, comparing him with the Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg, argued that Sanz Briz "might have accomplished even more had he received greater assistance from Madrid".^[11]

In total, nine Spaniards have been awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli institute Yad Vashem.

Post-war years

Preston writes that, in the post-war years, "a myth was carefully constructed to claim that Franco's regime had saved many Jews from extermination" as a means to deflect foreign criticism away from allegations of active collaboration with the Nazi regime.

admitted into the United Nations

in 1955.

Michael Alpert notes that "this public relations effort of the Spanish regime was remarkably effective, even in the Jewish world itself".

Spanish transition to democracy in 1975.^[15] Spain became a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

in 2008.

References

^ Alpert 2009, p. 204.
^ Preston 2020, p. 341.
^ ^a ^b Payne 2008, p. 215.
^ ^a ^b Preston 2020, p. 342.
^ Payne 2008, pp. 221–2.
^ ^a ^b Payne 2008, p. 234.
^ ^a ^b Alpert 2009, p. 207.
^ Alpert 2009, p. 205.
^ Payne 2008, p. 220.
^ Alpert 2009, pp. 203–4.
^ Payne 2008, p. 230.
^ Payne 2008, p. 232.
^ Preston 2020, p. 343.
^ ^a ^b Alpert 2009, p. 202.
^ Alpert 2009, p. 203.

Bibliography

Alpert, Michael (2009). "Spain and the Jews in the Second World War". Jewish Historical Studies. 42: 201–210.
JSTOR 29780130
.

ISBN 9780300122824
.

ISBN 9780871408686
.

Spain and the Holocaust

Background

The Holocaust

Official policy

Personal initiatives

Post-war years

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading